World News Quick Take

Agencies

PANAMA

Ship carried more explosives

Authorities say they have found more explosives aboard a North Korean-flagged ship detained in the Panama Canal for carrying undeclared arms from Cuba. Anti-drug prosecutor Javier Caraballo said on Saturday that inspectors found a kind of “anti-tank RPG [rocket-propelled grenade]” explosive when they opened one of five wooden boxes on the Chong Chon Gang. He said the other boxes were not opened because of security fears. The discovery comes just over a week after authorities said explosive-sniffing dogs had found another batch of ammunition for grenade launchers and other unidentified types of munitions. The ship was seized on July 15 based on intelligence that it may have been carrying drugs. The manifest said it was carrying 10,000 tonnes of sugar, but Cuban military equipment was found beneath the sacks.

CANADA

Boys killed by python buried

Two young brothers who were killed by a python that had escaped from its quarters were buried in the same coffin on Saturday. Connor and Noah Barthe, aged six and four respectively, were laid to rest in a service attended by about 100 people. They were found dead on Monday last week in an apartment above a pet shop in the town of Campbellton, New Brunswick. “It is a moment of extreme suffering, but there should not be anger or accusations at this time,” military chaplain Maurice Frenette said. The boys had been enjoying a sleepover with a friend, the young son of Jean-Claude Savoie, whose private menagerie of exotic animals included an African rock python. The initial police investigation found that the python probably managed to escape from its terrarium in Savoie’s apartment by nosing through a ventilation duct in the ceiling and dropping into the boys’ bedroom nearby. Animal experts expressed astonishment at the tragedy, many noting that African rock pythons would not normally attack humans.

BRAZIL

Lula gets cancer all-clear

Former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was given the all clear on Saturday after tests showed no sign of the throat cancer he was diagnosed with two years ago. “The medical team did not notice a return of the disease,” Roberto Kalil Filho of Sao Paulo’s Sirio-libanes hospital told a press conference. Lula underwent a PET/CT tomography scan, a Magnetic Resonance Imaging scan and a laryngoscopy and all three test results were deemed normal, the doctors said.

MEXICO

Kingpin set to be freed

Defense attorneys believe freedom is imminent for a second member of the trio of drug kingpins responsible for the 1985 slaying of a US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent, one of his attorneys said on Saturday. In the US, outrage grew over the surprise decision to overturn drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero’s 40-year sentence for the notorious kidnapping, torture and murder of DEA agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena on procedural grounds after 28 years behind bars, saying he should have originally been prosecuted in state instead of federal court. Also imprisoned in the Camarena case are Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo and Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, two of the founding fathers of modern drug trafficking in the country. Fonseca Carrillo’s attorney, Jose Luis Guizar, said his team had filed an appeal based on the same procedural grounds used by Caro Quintero, and expected him to be freed within 15 days by a different court in Jalisco.